The last two posts in this series, which featured songs that were played at the 1985 Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia, have been well received – thank you – so it seemed like a natural continuation to give the same treatment to the Live 8 shows. These were a string of benefit concerts that took place on 2 July 2005, in the G8 states and in South Africa. They were timed to precede the G8 conference and summit held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland, from 6–8 July 2005, and were run in support of the aims of the UK’s Make Poverty History campaign and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. Ten simultaneous concerts were held on 2 July and one on 6 July.

Here in the UK we saw three of those shows, in London, Edinburgh and at the Eden Project in Cornwall, and the global roster included concerts in Canada, Germany, France, the US, Italy, Japan, Russia and South Africa. This makes for a huge amount to take into just one or two posts, but I’ll give it a go! If you want to know more you can find the full Wikipedia page for Live 8 here. There is also a separate page listing all the performers, which you’ll see here, and there are individual pages for each of the concerts. Looking at those lists it struck me how international the whole thing was, with many artists playing away from home, so to speak. Very fitting for the aims, I feel.

Today I’m concentrating on the UK – specifically the show in London’s Hyde Park. I’m barely scratching the surface of a show that lasted for ten hours, but I hope you get a good idea of what we saw. Twenty years on from Live Aid I didn’t have the luxury of watching the whole show – two kids and other commitments got in the way of that – but I still remember many of these from the day. This is how it all began in London:

Paul McCartney and U2 with Sgt Pepper – “It was twenty years ago today” was a fitting start for the twenty year follow up. Macca returned later, as you’ll see, but he left the stage to U2 after this brief appearance. What else could they begin with, other than this:

As with my Live Aid posts I’m concentrating on the music rather than my waffle, but I think I should say that Beautiful Day is still one of my favourite U2 songs, even despite hearing it every week for a time when ITV used it as the theme tune for their football highlights package!

I’m not following the show’s order with my choices, just playing songs and bands that I like as the mood takes me. This next one might surprise regular readers, as this bunch are a bit more ‘pop’ than my usual offerings, but they are great fun, and Ana Matronic is undeniably gorgeous:

In case you missed it on the video, that was Scissor Sisters with Take Your Mama. They played three songs in the show and they were all fun like that one – not an easy choice for me!

I remarked earlier about bands playing other than in their own countries. Scissor Sisters was one of them, as is this lot. More familiar ground for me, as this is one of my usual suspects:

R.E.M. played three songs, of which Imitation of Life was the first. Regular readers will know that I’m a huge fan of the band, and this was great to see and hear.

This next one completes my trio of American visitors:

The Killers only played one song on the day. I’ve no idea why, but choosing All These Things That I’ve Done was a good idea: one of my favourites of theirs and judging by the reaction, the crowd liked it too.

As I mentioned earlier, Paul McCartney returned to play again – he closed the show. This is the second song in that set, where he is joined by George Michael:

That was Drive My Car, in case you hadn’t noticed. Macca began this set with Get Back, followed it with this, and then played Helter Skelter. He seemed to be going for some of the more lively tunes in his repertoire, but unfortunately he then finished with the worst dirge he ever inflicted on The Beatles (The Long And Winding Road), followed by the almost obligatory communal sing song of the Hey Jude chorus.

For both of my Live Aid posts I finished with the song that closed the show, but this time I’m doing something different. The highlight of the show for me was the penultimate set. When you have been a fan of a band since the Sixties, and its two main members haven’t played together for twenty four years due to a feud, seeing them onstage again together was an absolutely magical moment. I’ve told before how I watched this part of the show on the TV in the kitchen while doing the pile of washing up that had accrued during the day, and became aware of one of my daughters watching me, not being sure what to do or say. It was unusual for her to see her Dad cry, and she was worried. I explained it to her, and a hug later all was well. It is very self-indulgent of me, but I’m closing today with the full set played by Pink Floyd. If you want to go to a particular song, they began with Speak To Me/Breathe, then Money (at 4’53”), Wish You Were Here (at 11’39”), and Comfortably Numb (at 16’16”). In its full glory, this is what was for me a wonderfully emotional time full of memories:

This turned out to be the last time they played together, as keyboardist Richard Wright died in 2008 of lung cancer. “It was terrific fun,” said Roger Waters. “Quite moving. It was good to have that chance to let bygones be bygones. David [Gilmour] sent me an email afterwards saying, ‘I am so glad you made that phone call [Roger had called David at Bob Geldof’s behest]. It was fun, wasn’t it?’ And I said, Yeah, it was. It’s all good. There’s nothing bad about it.” They haven’t made another band album since then, but they have given us many fabulous musical moments over the years.

That’s all for today. I hope there was something for you amongst these, and that no one will mind that I didn’t play anything by Madonna, Mariah Carey or Robbie Williams – I’ll let you find those for yourself on YouTube!

Have a great week, and I’ll see you again soon 😊